XVI: The Kindness of Strangers
"Mommy, Can I Keep Her?"
Sonatine
The copper kettle atop the small circle of radiating heat whistled ceaselessly as steam jumped through the stemmed valve, blaring its incessant alert to all who could hear it. Its owner quickly came over to answer its cry—they took the kettle from the stove, flicking the heat off as they did so, and poured the boiling water into three solid white mugs. They then dipped a tea bag into one of the mugs, placed it onto a saucer, and took it over to the table, where their guest was hunched over a bowl of food.
"All we have is black tea," the host, a darkly bearded man named Dariush, said. "I hope that's all right."
Kelly reached up and accepted the saucer. A blanket had been draped over her shoulders, and the thick, meaty stew in the bowl before her brewed coils of steam that furrowed upon her face. Her shivering had subsided some, but blotches of pink from frostbite still stained her cheeks.
"Thank you," she said to the man. She did not tell him that she had no particular preference for tea. Blowing upon the glass-like disc of liquid first, she sipped the drink. It was hot and had some flavor. That was enough.
The tea did seem like it was enabling some warmth spreading through her body, as she imagined the heat surging through her veins like she was made up of a series of infrastructural piping. She sat upon a long table in the low-ceilinged kitchen of the homestead as she ate. The stew was something called a guisado, in which this particular recipe was made with lamb meat. A small plate filled with beans next to cornmeal flatbread awaited their imminent consumption within arm's reach of the Spartan. The guisado was very flavorful and rich, complex with a multitude of spices that she could not place. It was warm and filled her belly, which brought her some much-needed relief after tromping around outside for a couple of days without any sustenance.
Kelly looked out the window after she had spooned up another mouthful of stew. It was snowing again, the dry tufts swirling down in their fated spirals.
Inside, a fire had been lit within a large stone hearth. It crackled heartily with volumed snapping of the wood pieces as they were roasted inside and out. The woodchips were ringed by orange fire and formed a base that looked like lava.
After she was finished with her bite, Kelly reached over to spoon up some more guisado, but the movement had been performed a little fast and she grunted as the IV needle in her hand tugged against skin, stretching the webbing of her callused hands. An IV bag hung from a repurposed hangar upon a pole next to her, filled with a clear serum. The tubing and the bag had come from her medkit, but the medicine inside the bag, Iloprost, had been loaned to her by the family who lived in this house.
Kelly had been fortunate that there had been Iloprost in here at all—the drug was a synthetic analogue of the eicosanoid drug family that was normally used to treat hypertension. The drug was already in her bloodstream, dilating the blood vessels to allow for greater blood flow, already going to work at repairing the damage that had been inflicted upon her from her time outside.
She looked at her bare feet, which were submerged in a bucket of hot water under the table. Her toes were bright red, like they had been burned. She had lost all feeling in them hours ago, perhaps sometime last night. Any longer out there and they would be turning black. She was within the window for drug treatment, so there was a chance that she could save her toes without having to amputate. She just had to relax, let the Iloprost do its work, and keep her body warm no matter what.
Still, it was impossible to keep from shivering.
After a few more minutes, she had polished off the stew and began to use the bread pieces to soak up the last sauce drippings in the bowl. It was hard not to feel a bit self-conscious in her current state, dressed up in only her bodysuit and a blanket, relying on the intangible qualities of hospitality. It was hard to deny that she had the good fortune to come across this place, but Kelly had the good sense to not put too much stock into the intricate weavings of mere fate.
She studied her hosts. Dariush, over by the hearth and stoking the fire, was a barrel-chested man with chestnut skin. His wife, Elnaz, chopped meat and herbs in the kitchen, making another helping of guisado. She had curly hair the color of the blackest ink, and wore a farmer's jacket with a look of concentration on her face.
But the person giving her the most attention was the comparatively diminutive thing sitting across from Kelly at the table. Dariush's daughter, Soraya, gazed wide-eyed at the Spartan, watching her eat. She was a tiny little girl of about eight, that had her mother's eyes and mouth, but her father's jaw. No question that she was theirs. Occasionally, when she and Kelly would make eye contact, the girl would look away out of embarrassment. It was endearing enough that it brought a crack of a smile to Kelly's face every time it happened.
She was concentrating so much on Soraya that she almost missed Elnaz coming up from behind, at her left. Kelly whipped around in her seat so quickly that the other woman gave a jump.
"Sorry," Kelly said quickly, her pulse refusing to slow.
Elnaz nodded nervously. "I just wanted to take this from you." She reached down and picked up the empty bowl and brought it over to the stainless-steel sink.
"It was really good. The food, I mean. Thank you." She meant those words wholeheartedly, even if the sentiment felt odd to voice.
Dariush stood from the fire and wiped his hands with a rag. He walked over to the kitchen and spooned himself a bowl of stew and another for his daughter. Soraya was scampering around and he gently caught the child by the back of her shirt. "You need to eat, too, doxtar," he spoke to the girl. He then lifted the giggling Soraya into the air and into an awaiting chair. The bowl of food was then set in front of her—she began spooning the meal in big clumps; the girl was hungry.
Chuckling, Dariush took his own food and claimed the seat next to Kelly. He steepled his hands as he looked to his daughter first.
"She sometimes doesn't eat enough," he spoke to Kelly, keeping the Spartan in the corner of her eye. "The doctor only comes by twice a year to make sure she's healthy. Elnaz and I need to watch her, make sure she gets her nutrition."
Kelly considered little Soraya. The girl was skinny, but there did not seem to be anything outwardly wrong with her. At least, not at first glance. But perhaps that was one of the disadvantages of living so far away from civilization—as a Spartan, all of her meals had been meticulously planned and provided by dieticians and the best cafeteria cooks the UNSC could spare. Here, all this family could hope to muster was what grew on their farm, and what they could bring back from market on the rare day they decided to venture from their lands.
As she glanced out the window again, noting the accumulation of white slush upon the panes, Kelly was doubtful that much of anything was growing at all at this time of year.
Drumming her fingers awkwardly upon the table, Kelly considered her next words. "I… realize that my presence here may very well be an imposition, but I am grateful for the courtesy you've shown me."
She wondered if her tone was sounding too formal. Perhaps these civilians would prefer if she spoke more plainly? That prospect was like asking her to speak Sangheili, in all actuality.
Dariush turned towards her, ponderously absorbing the Spartan within his deep brown eyes. It was almost as if he could see through the veiled front she usually had erected for herself, a sort of understanding that had come from a lifetime of observing others. What those eyes had seen might rival the tribulations that Kelly had witnessed, but there was no way to be sure.
The man knew that the Spartan was trying to thank him and he nodded, a signal that he had detected the appreciation. "Imposition or no," he said, "it has been too long since a visitor has come calling. We hardly get out all that often anyway." His eyes flicked over the Spartan's thawing feet in the bucket and the IV tubing that dripped medicine into her veins. "You had to have come such a long way. It's very lucky that you found us. Another day out there and you might as well have frozen to death or become food for the sonawolves."
Sonawolves. Not hard to imagine that had been the creature that had attempted to make a meal out of her yesterday.
Kelly sipped her tea. The hot liquid rushed down her throat, stoking a needed fire in her belly. "I can believe that."
The farmer's eyes scanned Kelly from head to toe. "Soldier, I take it? Not hard to imagine—you've got the physique for it."
There was no reason for her to lie. Not to this question, at least. "Yes. Marine corps."
"You have a name?"
She almost said her first name, but thought better of it. Her name was commonplace, but it was also the only bit of information that was actively dispersed in the UNSC information rolls. Information that Phaedra or Logan could exploit.
"Shaddock," she replied, taking another spoonful of food.
Dariush leaned forward, interested. "I don't mean to pry, Shaddock, but… I have to ask you something."
Only Kelly's eyes moved. Her breathing slowed to a fine crawl in preparation. "Go ahead."
"It's probably the most obvious question that I can ask at this point, honestly. And please don't be offended by my asking. But, just how did you find yourself all the way out in the middle of nowhere? In all of… this?" He spread his hands to indicate the house, the forest, the world.
Kelly was not surprised that the man was suspicious. For all he knew, she could have been an escaped convict, or a person with less than noble intentions. Even in the middle of nowhere, the natural order maintaining a respectable level of apprehension was key to one's survival.
She debated telling him the truth. About herself. About Brandon. Maybe even go into broad strokes about her mission. That notion was quashed in her head before the thought could congeal. No, she had decided. No revelations. Nothing that could hope to offer any kind of identification. About what she did. Who she was.
But now, the only question she had to answer to herself was what kind of answer was this family even going to accept?
Fortunately, she could improv when her back was against the wall. Maybe a little truth could be mixed in, to give the lies a backbone. "Component on my Pelican failed during reentry," she said, the words coming effortlessly. "Crashed on the other side of the range, about two days away on foot."
"Did the company send you?" Dariush pressed, genuinely curious and not combative.
What company? She decided not to press her luck. "Supply run from Arbogast. UNSC. Scheduled to drop off crates of material from the docks there."
She stopped talking, hoping what she had divulged was enough to take. Fortunately, it seemed that Dariush was satisfied with her explanation and he nodded and patted the table.
"No doubt you'll be offering a complaint to your superiors when you next see them," he said, leaning back in his chair a bit. "It's funny—I had heard rumors from the dockworkers in town that the ships they were seeing were coming in such shoddy condition. Of course, they didn't have the parts to do anything about it, so they told me that some of those ships were practically being held together by glue and tape." He made a morose face. "I'm sorry to point it out, but it seems like you are just the first in a line of accidents with these ships. Accidents just… waiting to happen." He made an explosion gesture with a hand.
If you call a rocket strike an accident, Kelly thought.
"How far away is the town, anyway?" she asked.
"Three to four hours by vehicle. Maybe a day or more if you're going on foot. But, you're not planning on going out in this, are you?"
Dariush was pointing out the window. The outside fields had turned dark gray as the snow slushed down, obscuring everything to within a couple of meters. The woods beyond turned into sketches of black tree trunks across a matte canvas. It was a miserable sight and Kelly's toes ached at the prospect of venturing out there in her current state.
Staring at the window, Kelly said, "I think I might have pressed my luck enough lately."
"I would've been shocked if you had insisted," Dariush wisped a chuckle.
"I saw only one road coming in. Does that road lead straight to town?"
"It takes you to the main avenue, which will then take you to the town. There are signposts." He stood from the table and pointed a finger in the direction he was now travelling. "I can show you on the map, if you'd like?"
"Please," Kelly said.
The farmer retreated into his study and returned with a datapad. He slid the pad over to Kelly, which she thumbed on. With the map active, Dariush pointed out the route to get to the town, which only required her to only make a right turn onto the main road once she got off the family's property, which seemed like a trek just to get to that point. But the route itself seemed simple enough.
She noticed a logo at the bottom corner of the map. She tapped at it. "ZelazKyte Pharma. A biotech company issued the maps to you?"
Dariush nodded as he scooped up the datapad. He ruffled the hair of young Soraya as he walked around the table—the girl was just finishing her supper.
"We're independent contractors. Part of the local system farming guild. ZK Pharma owns the land here, but they sublet it out to smaller organizations. Families, too."
"How come?" Kelly asked, curious. The massive biopharma conglomerates, in her mind, would not be so generous to provide plots of land for small-time farmers to do as they wished. They typically had a drive to buy and hold as much land as possible for their own ends, regardless if they truly needed the real estate or not.
The farmer seemed to sense Kelly's interest and made a gesture towards the door and the land that lay beyond. "Terraforming a planet is a long and expensive process. Sometimes, the corporations would rather focus their efforts on worlds they deem more… lucrative. But, for the places that they don't have one hundred percent committal to, they invite others to step in and do the work for them."
"The soil, for example, is quite poor here," Elnaz added as she refilled Kelly's tea. "We applied for a plot of land here and won it through a lottery system. The company then gave us a timeline and material support to help us make the place fertile."
Dariush nodded at his wife. "If we make the land sustainable in our own little corner of the world, then the company gives us a sizeable payout. Like a bounty system, but for farmland. Of course, we can apply to have our contract extended to allow us to mine for resources or anything of that nature, but…" he placed a hand on his wife's arm as she passed him by, "...we're farmers. No one here is particularly good at digging holes in the ground. Well, the jury's still out on that one over there," he playfully nodded at his daughter.
Soraya stuck out her tongue at her father. "I'm not going to be a miner!" she rebelled proudly. "I'm going to go to Earth and be a scientist!"
"With that attitude, you're already well on your way," Dariush laughed. He looked at Kelly and quickly gestured to Soraya. "Kids. They say they really get unruly when they become teenagers, but this one apparently had a head start. Don't know where she gets it from. Has to be her mother's side." He had to duck as his wife lightly smacked the back of his head.
Watching the scene, Kelly smiled politely. Wouldn't know, she almost said.
Finished with her meal, Soraya was positively bouncing in her seat. "Have you been to Earth?" she called across the table to Kelly.
But Elnaz had already pulled out Soraya's chair and was shooing her away. "You can ask her later, little one. You still have chores to do. Get dressed and get your things."
"Aww," the dejected girl shuffled across the floor.
"No moping."
"Okay."
Kelly watched the girl leave. Once Soraya was out of earshot, she addressed Elnaz. "I didn't mind her questions," she said.
The woman smiled sympathetically. The smile of a mother knowing the tiredness of parentage.
"You would've. One question isn't enough to satiate that girl. She would've talked your ear off until you were at your wit's end. And that's for just about every subject that comes across her. Get her talking on something she's really interested about, and it will take her half a day until she tires."
"This is a routine, I take it?" Kelly slowly stood on wobbly legs and lifted her feet out of the bucket onto a towel on the floor. She slowly withdrew the IV from her hand and slapped an awaiting bandage before a dot of blood could pucker from the intrusion site.
"A daily one," Dariush affirmed. "But I wouldn't trade those moments for anything. Anyone who has kids and loves them would understand where I'm coming from." He sat in his chair and watched as the tall Spartan slowly turned in place, performing another mapping of the room. "How are you feeling?"
Kelly rolled her shoulders and cracked her neck. "Doing better."
The snow was now coming down at an angle, gently sticking to the ground as the tufts gathered upon the smoothened plain. Kelly moved to the window and watched the landscape change before her. She was straight-faced as she looked upon the gathering flurries, but her mood continued to darken. She was watching the impediment of progress in action. Another obstacle, another delay to her objectives. If it were not storming, she could have looked up and easily seen the moon of Arbogast in orbit. Brandon was up there. At least, she hoped he was still there. And elsewhere, across the stars and through the cascades of nebulae and the eternal obliteration of exploding and collapsing stars, Phaedra awaited in her steel and glass perch, awaiting the arrival of the soldier she loathed.
Two beings both incontrovertibly linked with her, all from her own decisions. Connections forged in the gossamer threads of causality. She had to get back up there, among the array of cosmic forges, hurtling through places no man was meant to be, so that she could right what had been wronged and make whole the mistakes she had made.
The only problem was that she was not yet ready. There was still some dullness in her senses. Her fine motor skills had been inhibited too much from the cold. It was an effort to simply clench a fist. To go back out into the snowy mess now would just invite more damage. More pain.
Time was of the essence, but what good was being fast if it came at the expense of her health?
"You said this won't blow over until sometime in the night?" she asked, continuing to watch the snow.
"That's what the forecast said."
Her breath hissing upon the glass, Kelly then looked back at the farmer. She noticed Dariush's kind eyes, his callused hands. How much he loved his wife and daughter. How he would do anything for them, that he would even kill to protect them. Civilians may have seemed like aliens to her, but Kelly could easily believe that she was in the presence of a truly good person.
"Do you need any help? I'd like to repay you for your hospitality. Anything you can think of, I'll lend a hand." She could have offered money in place of labor, but feared that would have been seen as insulting. Cash only went so far in places like this. If she could help these people survive, for that was what every action led to around here, then she would meet any task with all of her will.
Dariush tapped his fingers against one another, considering her offer.
"I don't want to exert you after what you've been through," he said.
Kelly gave a chuckle and tilted her head. "Honestly, I doubt you could."
The farmer had to agree. Even while wounded, he could see the Spartan was in fantastic shape. That bodysuit could not hide the ropes of muscle that rippled beneath its hexagonal-patterned carbon layering. Hell, he could believe that she could lift him bodily over his own table with just one arm.
He found his wife's eyes, having been convenience in seconds. "Elnaz?"
The woman did not even need to think. She immediately jerked a thumb behind her. "The 4x4's been acting up again. I was finally going to take a quick look after doing some inventory in the barn." She then appraised Kelly and placed a hand under her chin. "How much do you know about auto mechanics?"
Neither of the two knew, but Kelly had completely disassembled Warthogs in the field before with nothing but a socket wrench and a hammer. Finnicky beasts, those Warthogs. Sometimes she had made her impromptu repairs while bullets flew above her head as Marines shouted out to her while laying nearby in pools of their own blood and urine. Occasionally, her repairs had to be put on hold while she laid down ragged bursts of cover fire around her stricken vehicles. She could still recall the sharp clatter of grenade explosions as the shockwaves sprayed mud across her visor and armor.
"It's not unfamiliar to me," Kelly just said. "I'd be happy to help out."
Dariush lightly slapped his hand upon the table. "That's that, then. I've been meaning to peer under the hood of that damn thing for weeks, now. She'll be grateful for the help."
He stood and reached down for something next to his seat. He came up with a pair of boots and placed them between him and Kelly.
"They may be a little small—they're the largest thing we have, though," he said
Again appreciative of the gestures she was being provided, Kelly could only manage a nod of thanks. She claimed a seat so that she could slip the boots on. As Dariush had said, they were a little tight, but that was a discomfort she could easily live with. Quickly she stood and headed over to Elnaz, her head nearly scraping the wooden beams of the ceiling.
"Come on," Elnaz beckoned Kelly as she headed towards the door. "I'll get you a coat."
As they ventured out into the blizzard once more, Kelly half-expected to be ravaged by the same slashing cold that had relentlessly dogged her earlier today. But the thick and padded coat she now wore, in addition to some comfortable pants, handedly cut down on the wind chill and made walking around outside almost tolerable. Her cheeks turned a slight shade of rose, as they were the only bits of skin exposed, but otherwise she was doing all right.
Elnaz led Kelly to the rearward entrance to the barn. All told, they had only been outside for not even fifteen seconds. The woman opened the door and held it so that the Spartan could slip inside.
The two of them shook out their sleeves, depositing the accumulated flurries of snow upon the dry and dirt-streaked concrete. Elnaz then strode over to the back of the barn as she shoved her hood back down.
Slowly repeating the same gestures, Kelly took note of the barn. A large tarp covered the object taking up the most space in the middle of the barn. Judging from the fact that Kelly could see mud-splattered wheels peeking out from the edges of the tarp, this must have been the 4x4 that Elnaz and Dariush had been referring to.
The rest of the barn was rather sparse, like the family did not have enough possessions to fill the space. The back corners were completely unadorned. The right side of the barn contained a makeshift workshop that contained the bare essentials in terms of tooling. A few containers and drums lined the opposite wall, where Kelly noted a rack upon the side had been set up. Four long guns hung from the nails embedded through the poleboard. That did not surprise Kelly. In a place like this, it would be a foolish proposition to be out here unarmed at all. She watched as Elnaz moved over to the gun rack, selected a .22 hunting rifle, and set it down upon the nearby bench so she could take it apart and clean it.
While she was doing that, Kelly had gone over to the tarp and rolled up the end near where the engine was. She recognized the flared mudguards and the grill design of a TurboGen Spade flatbed right off the bat. They had been a ubiquitous sight on Reach, used mostly by the civilian populace. They possessed an independent driving system, was powered by the hardy M96 methane engine, and even shared several parts with the Warthog, which would make repairs easy.
"What's wrong with the truck?" Kelly asked as she lifted up the scratched hood to access the mechanical guts underneath.
"One of the methane cylinders occasionally stops firing," Elnaz said as she pulled back the bolt lever to one of the hunting rifles, making a smooth and metallic clacking noise. She looked at the empty chamber and closed the bolt back up. "Goes from a four-cylinder to a three-cylinder. Can't figure out why."
"Let me see."
Kelly found a hanging light that she fastened upon the underside of the open hood. The light dangled within its yellowed cage, shining upon the dusty and disused engine. She quickly found the source of the issue—one of the spark plugs to the cylinders had come out. She could see it protruding from the block at an uneven angle. Okay, so she had the culprit. Now she just needed to find the underlying cause.
As she worked on the Spade, Elnaz continued to examine and clean the guns one after the other (with Kelly keeping a somewhat apprehensive eye on her the whole time). Three hunting rifles were laid out, plus a shotgun. Two pistols were also introduced, the caliber no bigger than 9mm.
Grabbing a wrench, Kelly started loosening one of the bolts to the block. "You use those very often for hunting?" she asked, referring to the weapons.
Elnaz pumped the shotgun. A dry sound. A bit like someone was trodding over cheap plastic pipes. She silently declared it functional and slipped it between the workbench and the wall to a hidden rack underneath. Kelly watched her the whole time.
"Just to supplement our food supply," Elnaz said as she started disassembling one of the pistols, now that the shotgun had been stowed. "The forest here doesn't have many animals that we can readily eat. There are a few species of medium-sized rodents, but nothing that is comparable to any domesticated creature."
The farmer slotted in an L-shaped brush and began sliding it in and out through the barrel, cutting away any of the carbon scoring that had accumulated there.
At the same time, Kelly had pried open the engine block and found that one of the cylinder seals had frayed away. The pressure in one of the pistons had not equalized as a result and had resulted in a zone of positive pressure, pushing out against the spark plug, which explained its partial ejection. Nothing that she couldn't fix without the proper tools.
"Do you have a welding gun?" Kelly lifted her head up.
"You found something?"
"Just that the soldering on one of the cylinders is uneven. I can fix it up. Make it flush with the rest of the mold."
Elnaz pointed over near a stack of crates. "Should be a case on top."
Kelly found the case Elnaz was talking about. Inside was a squat and angular looking object with a flared nozzle at the end. Three primer cartridges lay arranged at the bottom. She picked one up and inserted it into the slot at the foregrip. She primed the trigger three times and a thin scalpel of flame zapped to life after a few strings of sparks had spat from the cold barrel.
She switched the welding gun off and headed back to the Spade with her new tool in tow. Elnaz was following the soldier's every movement with her head as she came back over.
"I hope you don't take this the wrong way," Elnaz asked, "but mind if I ask you something?"
Kelly's eyes barely narrowed. She held the welding gun at her side, her finger well away from the trigger. "Okay."
"You're a Spartan, aren't you?"
Kelly remained quiet. She counted the strong beats of her heart within her ribcage. She remembered to control her facial muscles and to let nothing through.
Well, if she had truly thought she was going to get away with who she was around here, then she might have been suffering from a bout of overconfidence. At her height and the imposing figure she cut, it was hard to imagine that she would be anything else. A steroid user, perhaps, but what kind of person like that would come out here? The alternative seemed like the more plausible scenario.
The farmer just smiled. Briefly. "A little more than ten years ago," she said as she set the pistol down, placing her hands in her coat pockets, "Dariush and I had just finished up one of our terraforming tours off of Cygnus VI and were waiting on Reach for our new posting. This was… oh, about two assignments before we were sent here. Before we started trying for a child. We had a lot more free time back then. And some bonus cash to spend. The two of us, we hung out in restaurants and bars until closing. Just… watching the people. Watching the city. And watching whatever was on the feeds."
Elnaz tipped her head up, serenely appraising the ceiling beams. She looked at Kelly again.
"You know, every night, they would highlight some account from the war. A battle we had won or lost. Humanity, I mean. A battle that humans had fought. And… every night, a profile on a Spartan would be featured. Whether that was a secondhand accounting from an interview, or a snippet from a poorly filmed helmet cam, the talking heads never failed to push forward these… well, how else can I put it? These super-soldiers. Magnificent men and women, clad in their green armor. Taller than any human I or anybody else has ever seen. Apparently, the greatest soldiers who had ever lived."
All the while, Kelly gave no reaction. She couldn't. For she did not know what she had to offer to this conversation.
And Elnaz seemed to sense this. The corner of her mouth rose in a sympathetic smile. "Propaganda, of course, but I have to admit, the pieces on the Spartans intrigued me. The only moments where I could catch glimpses of them were on the feeds. As Dariush and I were never close to any of the battles, we figured we could go the rest of our lives without seeing one in person. But, I always figured I'd know who they were, if I had been put close to one."
Almost tauntingly, Kelly mimicked the woman's smile. She set the welding gun down upon the engine and raised her arms a few inches in a bare imitation of a shrug.
"And?" she asked. "Have you found anything out?"
"Maybe. I'd think the one thing I really would like to know is how much the stories about them are true. Those media reports… they loved to talk about the Spartans as they were the heroes out of some storybook. I would want to know if the Spartans knew how everyone thought of them back home."
Kelly considered the scenario. Very rarely, if at all, had she thought of her impact to a collective populace. She had fought for an idea—the survival of humanity. Simply adhering to that task was reason enough to fight. Trying to imagine what some people all crowded in a bar thought of her was not only a distraction, it was a discordant concept in her mind to the point where she had difficulty in even conjuring such mental imagery.
She noticed that Elnaz's face had turned pensive. Almost solemn. Kelly wondered how deep the woman's knowledge of the Spartans went just from listening to the holofeeds. She had only been fed the sanitized version of their lives, she knew. The truth about their upbringing as children was still classified—there were only a few sections at ONI that knew the whole story.
After a bit, Kelly turned back to the Spade and primed the torch that she still held in a hand. She stared off into space momentarily, trying to imagine herself as the hero Elnaz clearly had in mind. She imagined herself standing upon a rocky outcropping, banners flapping in her wake, while jets roared by in the background. She internally winced. Even her mental propaganda made her sick to her stomach.
She placed a hand on the hood of the Spade before she turned to Elnaz. A frosty smile came to her lips.
"I'd think," Kelly said slowly, deliberately, "to a Spartan, notoriety or accolades does not equate to much compared to the need to see their mission through. To a soldier like them, wouldn't that be reason enough?"
Elnaz said nothing. Her mouth pursed and eyes rushed around the room in thought, trying to figure out what to say next.
Kelly waited a beat, listening to the creak of the boards and the whistle of the wind outside. Anxiously, she shuffled a foot upon the dusty floor.
"I should help out with this engine," she coughed to dispel the silence, her finger depressing the trigger of the welding gun at the same time to reproduce that spark of sapphire flame.
"Oh," Elnaz nodded in a distracted manner, oilstained cloth still in hand. She kept bobbing her head as she was turning around toward her workbench to pick up her routine where she had left off. "Oh, yes. Yes. Of course."
The storm had dissipated a bit in intensity by the time Kelly left the barn. Elnaz still had one more gun to clean, but the Spade had been humming without so much as a hiccup after Kelly had been through with it.
Now, Kelly slowly stuffed her hands in her coat pockets as she walked towards the house. She tilted her head up towards the textureless sky. Wet flakes found her face, disintegrating into frozen teardrops as they melted. The cold was almost a comfort, this time around. Thanks to the warm clothing that bundled her, it felt nice to have some contrasting temperature that threatened to combat her body's natural processes.
She stood at the corner of the house, breath wafting in the silence. Sketchbook trees all around the field. Each gulp of air like she was downing swigs of ice water.
Kelly had nothing else that she had to immediately do, so she started to make an orbit around the homestead. After she came to the far side of the house, she heard a series of dull thunking noises. Like someone knocking two large sticks together.
Rounding the corner, Kelly saw the daughter, Soraya, red-faced and panting, as she swung an axe half as tall as she was onto a sawed-off log that was standing upright upon a notched and gray stump. Split pieces of timber had accumulated on both side of the stump, many of them varying in size and shape. Judging from the stack of larger pieces of wood that had been arranged against the side of the house, it looked like the girl had only gotten to chopping not even quarter of the assembled logs.
Soraya hefted the axe above her head again. She inhaled a deep gulp of air. Then, with all of the strength in her eight-year-old arms, she brought the axe down upon the next log that she had set up. A shaving of the log split away, merely a splinter, and the axe stuck into the stump with a thwacking noise. The log wobbled where it stood, but it still remained mostly intact.
Breathing hard, Soraya finally seemed to realize that she had a visitor. Her face brightened as she saw Kelly. "Hey!"
Kelly smiled, which was not a hard thing to do in front of the girl. "Hey." She made a gesture towards the logs that had been chopped. "Wood for the fire?"
Soraya wiped her brow with the sleeve of her coat. "Yeah. Papa makes me chop a few logs before supper."
"Want any help?" the Spartan offered. Working on the Spade had given her a healthy exercise for her mind. Plus, the meds had fully kicked in by now, so she felt as fresh as ever.
To her credit, the girl actively considered her offer. She looked up to the sky and closed one eye while sticking her tongue out partway in thought.
She shook her head. "Nah, I can do this."
She lifted the axe again and made another hurtful blow towards her wooden victim below. However, the log was not about to go down without a fight—the axe lodged itself a few inches into the wood and stayed there, very much not interested in being bisected anytime soon.
This, of course, gave Soraya a great amount of annoyance. The girl tugged on the axe and found that it did not give. She planted a foot on the log as best she could and pushed with her leg and pulled with her arms—still nothing. The axe was stuck rather good. She alternated this routine for a couple of minutes but failed to extract the cleave from its wooden prison.
She gave a childlike grunt and animatedly raised her hands only to throw them back down. She gave a singular stomp in the snow and regarded the stuck axe as if it was her mortal enemy.
Finally, she turned to Kelly, who had been watching with amusement the whole time, her arms crossed. The girl's eyes were now big and pleading. "Can you help?"
Kelly chuckled. "Let's see what can be done," she said as she walked over to the stump.
The Spartan placed a hand on the stump and another hand around the handle of the axe. She made a very slight motion, almost as graceful as the act of simply standing up, but with a creaking noise, the rust-spotted cleave was quickly extracted from the stump. To Soraya, it had looked like Kelly had used no strength at all to wrench the tool loose and she gave a wry pout of jealousy. If only she was older, then she would have the strength, too.
Kelly balanced the axe in her hands and tested to see where its center of gravity resided. "How many logs did you father say you have to do?"
Soraya pointed in at a general spot near the middle of the wood pile. "He said about a third. But that's going to take me until—"
The axe became a silver whistle as Kelly slammed it down. Two perfectly cut halves of the log sprang away from the stump, the shear straight almost like a laser had bisected it to atomical precision. The swing had been so forceful that Kelly had even managed to embed the axe into the stump a couple of inches.
As she wrenched it out, she noticed that Soraya was gaping at her.
"Whoa," the girl said.
Kelly tried, and failed, to hide a smile. She had adult soldiers express outward admiration for her strength and prowess before, but it felt different, coming from a child. Soraya's surprise was fresh, honest.
The Spartan slowly rotated the axe in her hands. She tilted her head and gave a quick glance towards the wood pile. "Well? Got any more?"
Dumbfounded, Soraya just mindlessly nodded for a good two seconds before she snapped out of it and ran to the collection of assembled wood for dismemberment. She returned with an armful and deposited it at Kelly's feet, eager to see that display again.
As though as she had been doing such a thing for years, Kelly grabbed the closest log, quickly placed it upon the flat stump, raised the axe and brought it down so quick that the blow lasted only the length of a blink. The cleft pieces flung away from the stump so fast it was like they had been ejected on springs.
She repeated this process to the next log. And the one after that. And the one after that.
"Wow," Soraya nearly stumbled over herself as she practically sprinted back with more wood. "How… how'd you get so strong? You're so fast at this!"
Kelly paused after cleaving through her latest wooden subject. She had not even broken out in a sweat.
"Practice. I've had some training."
"Must be a lot of training."
The soldier bent down to grab another log. "You would be surprised," she told the girl with a laced note of amusement. The knocking sound returned as she attacked the logs in a quick series that did not even echo due to the snow swallowing up all noise.
Contrary to Soraya's fears that she would not get through her allotted number of logs for a while, Kelly had managed to get the job done in less than twenty minutes. It took another ten minutes for the two of them to stack the reminder of the halved pieces, but by the time they had finished, there was still plenty of light out, despite the thick gray cloud cover.
The child was breathing rather heavily from bustling back and forth. In contrast, Kelly was still standing straight and tall, unfazed, almost like she had just gone out for a quick walk.
"You're…" Soraya breathed, "…you're amazing."
Kelly just set the axe against the stack of un-chopped logs and dusted her hands. "There's a secret to it, you know."
"What? Being amazing?"
"No." Kelly turned and looked at the girl. "But you'll understand when you're older. It isn't about being amazing all the time. It's about figuring out where you're meant to be in… all of this." She gave a general sweep of her hand towards the sky. "It's about reconciling with yourself, realizing that your actions are for the right reasons. A moral cause. Admiration is not something to seek—it simply follows you. What you do with it is up to you, understand?"
Soraya kicked snow, hands in her pockets. "I guess. You sound like Papa."
"Then he and I are of the same mind. You said you wanted to be a scientist?"
The girl nodded excitedly.
"What do you want to study?"
Soraya pointed a slender finger towards the sky.
"That."
Kelly looked up and recognized immediately what Soraya was referring to. Past the clouds. Past the atmosphere. Way, way into that deep, dark void. The possibilities endless. The discoveries multitudinous. Up there was the consistency of change. The cradle of life and death. Far more dynamic than the rather simple life she was stuck in down here.
"It's a big galaxy," Kelly said as she continued to crane her neck upward. "You would be spoiled for choice if you wanted to stay up there. Some people think space is lonely, though."
"Not me," Soraya vehemently shook her head. "I've wanted to stay up there since I was little."
Kelly chuckled. "You're still little."
"Am not!"
This girl was a firecracker, Kelly decided. Kind of reminded her of herself, at that age. She had always wanted to be right about everything, too.
"Very well," she said. "I'll take your word for it. You didn't need help with anything else, did you?"
Soraya pulled a face. "Just got to go out and see if I can do some hunting for food. We got done with the wood this quickly, so there's still light out."
"Game's all you eat around here?"
"Nah, we have plenty of supplies from town. Papa just wants our food stores to be stocked at all times. The rabbits around here are actually really good."
The Spartan crossed her arms and looked to the ground, suppressing a smirk. Oh, how she dearly wanted to casually let slip that she was a "rabbit" herself, but obviously she needed to exhibit better self-control than what her failing impulses were urging.
"You have rabbits here?" she asked instead.
"Not exactly," the little girl moved her head from side to side, uncertain. "I mean, they're not really rabbits. They just look like the ones I see in my book—Magnificent Earth Creatures, have you read it?"
"Can't say that I have."
The girl was already headed back to the barn before she abruptly stopped in place. Her boots momentarily skidded on the slushy ground. She turned back. "Do you want to come with me?"
Kelly blinked, a bit off guard by the offer. "That's kind of you, but wouldn't your father worry?"
Soraya just playfully grinned and shook her head. "He worries enough whenever I go off by myself. But he's always too busy and mama doesn't like hunting."
Kelly considered for a moment. The road off in the distance seemed to beckon tauntingly. Like it would always be a path forever out of reach. The gray speckled snow twirled around her head, nesting in her hair. If she concentrated enough, she could still feel the dull throb of the frostbite scars nip underneath her skin. The desire to just start walking was strong, but her ultimate survival and the uncertainty of the path ahead gave her pause.
In the end, she had to accept she was indeed stuck here, if only for one more day.
Besides, she could use something to distract her mind.
"Sure," she said. "Why not?"
Once the girl had come back from the barn with one of the .22s did they set off, the pair of them, into the forest. There was no trail to mark their passage. Kelly assumed that Soraya knew where she was going—kids had good memories for certain things—but she took care to construct her own mental map.
The woods were cold and silent. Bare trees rose all around them, their trunks stained with white and their branches stenciled with the same color. Roots tangled among the half-buried rocks and the hikers kept their steps high lest they trip. They walked and Kelly studied the gray and brown landscape, watching at how the light was reflected and brightened from the snow. Her keen ears heard every creak, every groan, and every whisper the forest exuded. A vast and silent auditorium where its only attendees, it seemed, were the two humans.
Personally, Kelly had had enough of this frozen forest to last a lifetime, but she marveled at how Soraya did not seem to be fazed by the environment. She seemed rather bored of it all, considering she was being a little chatterbox all while they hiked, not at all focused on their surroundings. She talked about space and the various types of rare anomalies that lightyear explorers had chanced upon, like ruby nebulae, brown dwarfs, binary systems, and the like. The girl was so enthralled at having someone to talk to that Kelly did not have the heart to point out that her constant talking was probably scaring off all the animals.
Kelly did not mind listening to Soraya, though. In a way, it was kind of calming.
Eventually, the girl seemed to realize on her own that she was not going to be much of a successful hunter if she was talking all the time. She finally quieted and the two of them moved through the trees. Kelly let Soraya take the lead—she strolled behind at a rather languid pace, almost as if she were an impartial wraith to the whole scene, intrigued to see how things would play out.
She spotted the creature before Soraya did, but did not say anything until the girl froze in place and whispered, "Wait! Wait!" The two of them hunkered down into a crouch.
Kelly had to admit the animal did look like a rabbit. A bit. Its ears were markedly shorter and its hind legs were a little too limber. Almost like it was a bad sketch of what someone assumed a rabbit should look like if they had never seen one before and had to draw it from a poor description. Over by a cluster of SUV-sized boulders, a tiny gray-and-black-haired rodent was merrily digging in the snow, miraculously having not detected the presence of the hunters. Either that, or it simply had no idea of the danger that it was in, somehow having missed the noise the humans had made as they approached.
Its side was to them and Kelly could note its dark black eyes from this distance. "Good angle," she spoke lowly to Soraya. "Not much wind here. It's a good shot."
Lifting the rifle, Soraya slowly pulled the bolt handle all the way back before slamming it back forward, loading a round into the chamber. The .22 had a simple 6-24x Kaan scope attached, as cheap as money could buy. She held the rifle in place, but Kelly noticed that the girl's arms were wobbling as she struggled to steady the weapon. Still, the soldier kept quiet, wanting to see what would happen next.
For several seconds, the rabbit continued to dig in the snow, oblivious at being underneath the crosshairs of a rifle scope. Soraya sucked wind as she tried to fill her lungs and steady her nerves. A breeze blew a gale of frost in Kelly's face—she blinked the offending material away.
Finally, with a whisper and a delicate touch to the trigger—
The barrel of the .22 gave a snap like a firecracker going off. The noise did not faze the two. But the snow just behind and to the right of the rabbit puffed, like a tiny meteorite had just struck the ground there, and the boulder made a light pinging sound as the round ricocheted and fragmented off of it after skimming underneath the snow.
The rabbit jerked its head up, alerted from the disturbances. Before Soraya could load another round, the creature took off, leaving embedded paw prints in the snow as it rounded the corner and was out of sight in the next second.
Soraya lifted her head and lowered her rifle in disappointment. "Argh. I knew I couldn't hit it."
"Say it enough times and it comes true," Kelly said automatically. Mendez's words. That man had the ability to turn a phrase at the drop of a hat. How many times had he said that same thing to his recruits in that first year whenever they had range practice? "Do you want a tip?"
Biting her lip, it looked like Soraya's wounded pride might have caused her to rebuff the offer, but after a bit, she sullenly nodded, though interest managed to crack through her façade.
"May I?" Kelly asked, pointing to the rifle. Soraya handed it over. The Spartan entered the same crouching position the girl had been in—one knee on the ground, the other in front of her. "You've probably been watching a lot of military clips, right? The ones where they show the soldiers in this exact position, firing like so?"
"Yes," Soraya admitted.
"That's not exactly what you should be doing, starting out. A soldier only fires their weapon, supporting it with just their hands, after they've had a lot of training. What you should be doing is resting your rifle on a flat surface so that it doesn't move around so much, even if you have to get down on your stomach to do it if nothing is available."
"In the snow?" The girl finally seemed to be addressing the slush with a modicum of discomfort.
"If that's what it takes," Kelly said as she handed the rifle back. "And one more piece of advice, if you'd like it."
"Sure."
"I saw you pulling on the trigger with your whole finger. When you do that, that tends to jerk your weapon off-center. Next time you're aiming at something, try pulling the trigger with just the tip of your finger. That's all you need."
Nodding, Soraya seemed to be absorbing the advice. "Okay."
They stood and continued on their way. They loosely followed the tracks that the rabbit had made in the snow, but peeled off when the tracks led into some terrain that was thickly covered with brush and sloped towards a series of loose scree. Not much sense in going through there when there was almost certainly another rabbit out waiting to cross their path.
A pale stream of blue cut through the murky clouds above. It was up there for ten minutes before the vapor moved in to stem the slash.
Soraya led them in what Kelly now realized was a circular path around the homestead. They were probably no more than ten minutes away from the dwelling, even though they had been out here for far longer than that.
They started slowing. Soraya was no longer holding her rifle as alertly as she used to in the beginning. She was getting bored, it seemed.
"Does your family set any traps around the woods?" Kelly asked, trying to break the silence.
"Nah."
"You'd probably catch something to eat that way. Want to learn how to make one?"
The girl stopped walking. She turned around, accidentally swinging the rifle in Kelly's way. "You know how to do that?"
Stepping forward, the Spartan gently pushed the barrel of the rifle down so that it was pointing at the ground. "Sure. All you need is some wire and a couple of sticks." She had made similar traps during SERE training when she was left out in the woods all by herself. She had lasted a week catching and roasting animals that she had caught in traps that she had devised herself, thanks to Deja's teachings.
They had the sticks, considering they were in the middle of the woods, but neither one of them had any wire handy. Soraya suggested that they start heading back home—she was done with hunting for today and this latest project of learning how animal traps were going to be made now came to the forefront of her mind.
The ground sloped downward as they walked towards the thin barrial where the homestead was resting. They reached a slight ridge that crested in a crescent shape. They followed this ridge to a tiny overlook that had been glazed with collected snow. Soraya hopped the two-foot drop and rolled down a small hill, smiling all the while. Kelly just took a little jump and landed rather gracefully on her feet on the lower surface. Soraya stuck her tongue out at her at this quiet showmanship.
Soon, ahead of them the trees were starting to thin. The ridge was now to their left, broken by a few tiny rockslides that had left rough paths trailing down the hillside.
Soraya was looking upwards, admiring the spiracles of the trees and how they seemed to stretch heavenward. Then she took a gentle panorama around the land, her pace nearly at a skip as she envisioned the day's events ahead with eagerness.
Then she stopped. So did Kelly.
They had seen the exact same thing. Atop the ridge, ambling slowly along, was another finely tufted rabbit, its footsteps sinking just so slightly into the fluffed surface. Whether or not it was the same one was anyone's guess—this one did not seem to have been alerted just yet.
With a controlled swiftness, Soraya took a knee and brought her rifle up after loading one of the tiny rounds. The weapon made a series of delicate clacking noises as the bolt slid forward in its locked position. She raised the rifle, aiming at the rabbit on the ridge above, when she lifted her head away from the scope. Judging the distance.
Then, she looked at Kelly. She offered the butt of the rifle to the Spartan. "Can you try?" she whispered.
Kelly considered the weapon, unsure about taking it from the girl in this moment. "Are you certain?"
Soraya nodded. There was no hesitation in her decision.
The Spartan smiled and took the rifle from the girl's hands. She kept still in her crouching position and slid the tip of her finger against the curve of her trigger. The mechanism was stock, and the sights were basic, but they would suffice for this moment. She considered the .22 ammunition, gauging the bullet drop in hundred-meter increments.
The rabbit stopped upon the ridge and rose up onto its haunches, sniffing the air, its ear twitching in the cold.
There would be no other shot.
Kelly did not even have to hold her breath. She just willed the tip of her finger to move and it responded.
The caliber was so small that the weapon barely bucked against Kelly's shoulder. Through the scope, she saw the animal standing one moment. In the next, it was on its side, a blitz of snow sprinkling in the air around it as if the ground itself had been startled.
"Hit," she called out. She handed the rifle back to Soraya and patted the girl on the back. She then pointed up the ridge. "I'll go get it for you."
Watching as Kelly tromped through the snow layer to retrieve her prize, Soraya numbly looked down at the rifle she held. One moment, it had been a useless hunk of metal piping, unable to down even the smallest and paltry of creatures. In the next, it had become a precision instrument, capable of dispensing its passionless judgment with just the briefest brush of a synapse.
"That's just so cool," she whispered, already replaying the scene several times over in her head.
They did not end up eating the rabbit that Kelly had shot. Not today, at least. It still needed to be cleaned and skinned, so Dariush put it in the family's freezer to sit for a day. For dinner, Elnaz had prepared a sort of pasta and bean concoction with a spicy sauce, something that did not skimp when it came to flavor and was also rather healthy to boot. Kelly could greatly appreciate the effort it took to prepare a homecooked meal like that.
After dinner, Kelly helped the family clean the table while Elnaz washed the dishes. Afterward, true to her word, she had sat with Soraya at the table, with a couple sticks and a few meters of wire that had been procured, and gave the girl a few tips on how to make a suitable slipknot trap. Even the parents had assembled at the edge of the room, watching the display.
Night came quickly and everyone soon headed off to retire. Dariush had offered her Soraya's room to sleep in, but Kelly had refused. The couch looked comfortable enough. She had once slept sitting up on a Warthog while it was being ferried by a Pelican over a dark and stormy sea. The couch, in comparison, was a luxury.
The night was uneventful and Kelly managed to snag her first real rest in weeks. She only awoke twice during the night at the faintest disturbance, but it always turned out to be the wind blowing against the house.
When she closed her eyes for the last time and opened them again, the darkness had fled and the sun was out. A bright blue sky shimmered through the panes, the storm having blown over. Kelly got up from the couch and had to squint her eyes at first, for the sunlight reflecting off of the fresh snow was almost mirrorlike in intensity.
For breakfast, they ate scrambled eggs with salt and pepper. Kelly noted that the family did not own any hens and these eggs were not powdered—the cost to buy such simple ingredients had to have been inflated several times over out in this place. As they ate, Soraya regaled the family for the third time of how Kelly managed to successfully hunt the rabbit—Kelly noticed that with each retelling, the story grew more and more fanciful, particularly how her shot had been made at angles more impossible than the last. She let the girl chatter on, not wanting to spoil her enthusiasm. Her parents, at the very least, humored their daughter's distortions with grace.
Admittedly, this had been a much-needed detour that the Spartan had taken. But, even with just a delay of a couple of days, she had been unable to shake the feeling that she had been gone too long. It was time to get back to Arbogast—she had people up there waiting for her.
But Dariush and his family were not done with their hospitality. After cleaning up breakfast, Kelly was surprised when she arrived at the front door to see that a knapsack, the coat she had used the other day, and a .22 rifle had been set aside for her.
"I couldn't," she turned back to Dariush. "You've done enough already."
The broad-shouldered man waved off the refusal. "I'd have a heavy weight on my conscience if I didn't let you go out with something to sustain yourself with. The pack has a few rations of a trail mix from the general store over in the main colony. I've also added a box of ammo."
"I appreciate it," Kelly said as she lifted up the rifle, preparing to hand it back. "But I would never ask to deprive you of a weapon, especially since you need it to live around here."
"We've got two others in the barn—I'm sure you saw them. Truth be told, they're the cheapest things in that barn. I can just pick up another one when I go into town next."
Kelly then walked over to the table. "At least let me compensate you for the supplies. Do you have a pen? I can write down the number of my discretionary account—"
"Absolutely not," Dariush shook his head. "You were our guest here. It would be impolite to impose."
The brusqueness of the man's generosity was spellbinding, if not a tad aggravating (in a good way) to Kelly.
"It would be impolite for me to have accepted what you've done for me without reimbursing you."
"And you've already done so," Elnaz chimed in. "You helped work on our Spade. You chopped firewood for Soraya. And you gave her a few tips on how to hunt. I think that's more than enough."
Kelly sensed she was not going to win this battle, so she conceded with a graceful nod of her head, noting the pleased smiles from the family in front of her. But when Dariush and Elnaz momentarily bustled off to the kitchen to address something, Kelly beckoned Soraya over and bent down to whisper into the girl's ear.
"You don't happen to know your parent's account transfer code, do you?"
"Sure do," Soraya brightened and she quickly rattled off a number. "Why?"
"I'll be sending them something when I get back to civilization. Don't tell them, okay? It's our secret." As a technically employed soldier of the UNSC, Kelly had been entitled to some form of renumeration since her "enlistment", otherwise there would have been a legal conundrum to add on top of the morally nebulous situation of her work status. The money had been accumulating in an account that she had only used twice in her entire life. She was not rich, but she would not need to want for anything if she, for whatever reason, were to be suddenly dumped from the military without warning.
A mischievous smile broke across Soraya's face, but she bobbed her head conspiratorially to ensure that she understood.
Kelly later left the house at nine-thirty, local time. She waved goodbye to the family standing on the porch—a singular pass of her hand, which was fairly minimal compared to the jumping routine Soraya was doing while she was frantically wagging both arms in the air. They were parting with the expectation that they would never see each other again, so every one of their actions encompassed their own brand of longing and gratefulness.
She took the road heading through the woods and soon the homestead was swallowed by the trees once she rounded the curve. The ground underfoot was perfectly smooth and white, a tunnel of branches and snow the only path forward. The coat that had been given to her was snugly zipped up, keeping her inner organs warm. The rifle she held at her side, ready to use at a moment's notice. She strolled through the forest with a purpose, a clear itinerary of her journey ahead.
As she walked, she took an inventory of what had been stocked in her pack. A few bags of nuts and dried fruit. And not one, but two boxes of .22 ammo. Kelly sighed and took a quick glance back, as if she was expecting the little girl to have followed her, but there was no one there. These people had been too kind to her. Not even all of the credits in her account could hope to settle what had been provided to her today. She just hoped that every one of them knew what their good deeds would end up paying forward.
Soon, the trees cut away to reveal a gently sloping field to the right of the rode. Kelly stuck close to the treeline, one eye always on the horizon. The perfect sky showed no evidence of the storm from yesterday, the clouds having melted away like they had always been ephemeral figments of the imagination.
Kelly had to admit that she only now understood why someone would choose to live like this, out in the middle of nowhere with nothing but a natural vista to act as the immediate setting. It was a peaceful life. There was no war here. Covenant, Banished, UNSC, it did not matter who was winning or losing out there in the galaxy. Here, the battles were more personal—survival in nature. There was no alignment, no sides to take. Simply just the effort to live a life as fulfilled as one could. There was a lot to admire about that.
An hour passed and she still had not reached the main road. She had not been walking with anything less than a determined pace, too. Dariush had said that it would take most of the day for her to reach the closest town on foot. She had hoped he had been exaggerating, but it seemed like he was pretty accurate with his estimate.
At least the views were pretty. She walked across rolling fields, the crumpled mountains in the distance all primordial and jagged, dipped in snow. There were several passageways that punched through the woods, allowing the Spartan ample coverage as she became a ghost in the hedgemaze, a lone enforcer marking their own path through snowdrift adits. She passed by a few thunderstruck scrogs, having once trailed smoky spires days ago. The burnt trees were surrounded by white fulgurite where the electricity had exploded the ground and had melted the soil when it had been curling into the air.
The road led to a ridge that curved around one of the foothills. Far below, to her left, she could see where the woods rushed down towards the exit of the valley far below her. Upon the bare land beyond, she could see a wasteland of frosted craters, a fog of white obscuring where the round of the world could be observed.
Kelly did not stop to admire the view. She kept on walking, thoughts of Brandon repeatedly surfacing in her mind.
She continued to follow the road, the certainty of her task never once leaving her. But when the path led to another steppe bordered by the forest, the road rigid and straight in front of her and dipping towards a rising mountain like a slender stylus, enabling her to see for miles, she finally stopped.
It was not a sound that made her stop. Not a twinge in her sixth sense or any of the like.
It was just, out there in the distance, in the middle of the road, the undeviating avenue had flexed, somehow. Like a mirage, or a trick of the light.
But then it flexed again. And again. A low phenomenon that could only have been a couple of meters in height, localized just to that one spot a hundred meters down the road. She only knew to look for such things after decades of war, having trained herself to spot any anomaly in her surroundings, no matter how slight.
Kelly shouldered her rifle and aimed the weapon down the perpendicular line. A .22 bullet was not going to do much damage, but if she hit the neck or any artery, she could open up a critical channel and cause severe blood loss to her target in seconds.
She watched through the scope as the warbling section of air grew closer and closer. Footprints that belonged to no one etched themselves in the snow as the swirling distortion approached.
Despite herself, Kelly allowed a long breath to flow from her body.
"Turn it off, or I fire, Furan," she called out.
She saw the footprints cease their march in the snow, about a dozen meters away. A few seconds later, there was a dull vacuum in her ears and the frosty air seemed to congeal and shatter away to reveal a pearlclad Elite standing before her, their hands emptied of any weapons.
"Had I been wishing you harm, you would never have noticed my approach," the Elite asked by way of greeting once her active camouflage had died down.
Kelly rasped a sarcastic laugh, the sound caustic in the dry air. "Sounds like an excuse to me. You're probably just mad that I noticed you before you could announce yourself. Or am I wrong about that?"
The Elite just gave a huff, heat curling from her nostrils. Surely, she was silently damning the human for her powers of perception.
Kelly lowered the rifle and the two resumed walking toward the other. They met on the road, gazing upon their wearied eyes, but finding a fire of relief slowly start to simmer in their gazes.
"It is… good to see you alive, Spartan," Furan said, the admission coming haltingly, as if she were embarrassed to be even saying such a thing.
"Likewise," Kelly said after a brief pause. "You've been looking for me very long?"
"About a day or so. I managed to steal one of their shuttles after hiding in their complex for a few hours."
"You didn't get shot down, too?"
The Elite rumbled a laugh. One of pride. "No. They had no chance to react until I was well away from their base." She pointed back down the road from where she had come. "I landed next to a small lake, surrounded by the trees. About a quarter of a day's hike from here. I was making low passes over the valley when I picked up this small dwelling on my scopes. Figured that was worth a closer look. I came by this way on foot in case there were any anti-air emplacements looking to lure me into a trap."
Dwelling. She must have meant the homestead. "I had been staying there, actually," Kelly said. "I was waiting until yesterday's storm would dissipate."
"Hmph," the Elite grunted. "Had I known that, I would've just landed in the clearing."
"Probably would've frightened the residents," Kelly thought, thinking of Soraya, and how her parents would have undoubtedly rushed for their weapons at the sight of visitors in a roaring ship overhead.
"They would have gotten over it," the Elite shrugged.
On some level, Kelly missed the Elite's general callousness to human life. But what she did not expect was the sense of comfort in just seeing a familiar face, even if it was an alien's.
Furan noted the rifle that Kelly was carrying. "I see you've already performed your on-site-procurement. It does not look like a formidable weapon, though."
Kelly shrugged. "It won't do much good against body armor. That ship you stole didn't have any weapons on board, did it?"
"A complement of the military-grade items your footsoldiers are so fond of carrying around," the Elite affirmed.
"It's more than I have right now," Kelly said. "It'll have to—"
She halted midsentence and frantically began scanning the sky. A growling and distant rumble had entered the lower registers of her ears and she took a few seconds to pinpoint the direction of the noise before she had her head oriented right on course to the source.
"Down!" Kelly hissed. "Into the forest!"
The two of them bodily dove off the road and hid behind a screen of shrubbery. Not once did the Elite question this directive. They kept prone and made sure to partially bury themselves with snow, to hide their heat signatures as best as they could.
A minute later, a low roar emitted through the valley as a Pelican dropship swerved around a rocky bend, its engines streaming a gentle flame as it straightened out its gentle arc, now heading back in the direction that Kelly had just been hiking from. The Spartan and Elite slowly tracked the Pelican, but the ship did not so much as twitch in their direction. After another minute, the Pelican disappeared out of sight past the coniferous canopy.
Kelly and Furan waited until they could no longer hear the throb of the Pelican's thrusters. Slowly, they stood, the snow streaming from their bodies like dust.
"A patrol from the moon," Furan explained. "They've been making passes over this area all day."
"I figured they would still be after me," Kelly grimly said. Then a thought came to her and the contents of her gut took on a rancid chill. She took a step back down the road, everything seeming to blur around her like a massive fog had just rolled in. "Oh, shit."
"What is it?"
"The Pelican probably saw the homestead. It's the only standing structure for miles out here. If I were Logan, I'd want to confirm that I wasn't still holed up in there."
The Elite slowly scraped a patch of ice from one of her shoulder pauldrons. "Then we should be lucky that the traitorous Spartan has been distracted. We can use this opportunity to get back and regroup before—"
"No," Kelly coldly stated. Something had reformed within her. A somber fire, formidable in its power. In an instant, the conditions had been altered, the rules irreparably shifted.
The mission, for better or worse, had changed.
Furan's hand froze mid-scrape. She blinked at Kelly, uncomprehending.
"No?"
"No," Kelly repeated. She then started to head back down the road from where she had originated, taking several vengeful steps, with each stride proclaiming a new statement. She then turned, both hands firmly clenched upon her rifle. Even without MJOLNIR armor, there was a formidable edge to the gray look that raged against the blue of her eyes. "There's a family in that house. Logan will kill them just for associating with me."
Furan made a noise of derision. "We don't even know if they will even bother with landing there. This is our opportunity to escape, Spartan. You would treat your own life so callously for that of strangers?"
Sourly, Kelly shook her head. The Elite would not understand. Perhaps she would never understand. A Spartan's job was never to just destroy the enemy. It was about being so much more. A defender of humanity. A symbol of their superiority. An ideal to live up to.
Kelly would be damned if she walked away from this.
"Retreat if you must," the Spartan growled, already starting to turn to place Furan behind her. "But I'm going back. Logan and his soldiers won't be satisfied until that cottage is ashes. But this time, I'll be there to meet them."
A/N: A fun fact: Soraya was going to be the name for the primary villain of Rabbit Zero-Eight-Seven until I stumbled across the name of "Phaedra" (in the credits of a movie, of all places). I still had a soft spot for the name "Soraya", so I'm glad I got to use it somewhere in this story, at least.
Playlist:
Barnwork
"Short Time to Live, Long Time to Wait"
Graeme Revell
Red Planet [Isolated Score] "Original Motion Picture Soundtrack"
Hunting / Talk of Traps
"Good Lord Indeed, Mr. David"
Matteo Zingales, Michael Lira & Andrew Lancaster
The Hunter (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
The Walk Back / Furan Returns / Decision to Return
"A Way of Life"
Hans Zimmer
The Last Samurai (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)